A Senate committee voted Thursday to hold Anthony S. Fauci in contempt of Congress after the longtime infectious-disease scientist declined to answer its questions and accused the committee chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), of trying to wrongly entrap him.
The panel voted 8-7 to hold Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, in contempt after he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in a hearing before the Senate’s government oversight committee last week.
The vote fell along party lines, with Republicans voting to hold Fauci in contempt. Democrats repeatedly attempted to delay the outcome and were voted down by the GOP majority. Two Democrats were absent and voted against the resolution by proxy.
Paul reiterated that he plans to refer the matter directly to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. After the hearing, he told reporters that he didn’t know whether the department would act on the committee’s referral but that it would be hand-delivered Thursday to the attorney general and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The Justice Department, which is not obligated to prosecute Fauci, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the vote but told The Washington Post last week that it “seriously reviews all congressional referrals.”
At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, Paul argued that Fauci had no legitimate reason to sidestep the committee’s questions in part because President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Fauci before Biden left office, saying that Fauci had not committed wrongdoing but was at risk of prosecution from the incoming Trump administration.
“Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution,” Paul said. “All he had to do was tell the truth.”
Sen. Gary Peters (Michigan), the top Democrat on the panel, responded that the contempt vote would harm the committee’s ability to conduct future investigations.
The committee’s work “depends on the legitimacy of our investigations and a recognition by witnesses, courts and the public that Congress is exercising its powers dutifully,” Peters said. “The contempt resolution before us today puts all of that at risk.”
Peters also argued the full Senate — not just the committee — should determine whether to refer the resolution to the Justice Department.
It is unlikely the measure could clear the full Senate because it would need support from some Democrats to clear the 60-vote filibuster.
David Schertler, a lawyer for Fauci, called Thursday’s committee vote a “crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights.”
“It is shameful and wrong that Senator Paul is abusing his power by trying to weaponize the Justice Department against an honorable public servant,” Schertler said in a statement.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) on Wednesday night said that he had obtained a copy of Fauci’s government phone from the Trump administration ahead of the vote.
“Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” Johnson, the chairman of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote on social media.
Paul and Johnson have spent years criticizing Fauci’s guidance during the coronavirus pandemic, such as his encouragement of vaccine mandates and social distancing. Johnson had been seeking to obtain the retired government scientist’s phone for months, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The Department of Health and Human Services — now led by fellow Fauci critics including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — turned over the copy of Fauci’s phone, Johnson wrote on social media. HHS also turned over years of Fauci’s personal diary entries that were collected from government servers, Kennedy and Paul have previously said.
A representative for Fauci declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Johnson had obtained Fauci’s phone.
Paul subpoenaed Fauci earlier this year, saying that the longtime National Institutes of Health official had not been forthcoming about the possible laboratory origins of covid-19, along with other pandemic matters. Fauci has denied Paul’s allegations and has said he already sat for extensive interviews, including 21 hours of testimony in 2024 with a House subcommittee investigating the government’s pandemic response.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said last week, before announcing his plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Lawmakers in both parties have moved in recent years to hold current and former government officials in contempt of Congress.
The House in 2021 and 2022 voted to hold Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, who had advised President Donald Trump during his first administration, in criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas related to the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The votes were largely along party lines, with Democrats and several Republicans voting to hold Bannon and Navarro in contempt, and the remaining 200-plus Republicans opposed.
Both Bannon and Navarro, who claimed that their decisions not to testify were by Trump’s invocation of executive privilege, later served prison time.
House Republicans in 2023 also teed up a contempt vote against then-FBI Director Christopher A. Wray but canceled it after reaching an agreement to reveal more details about allegations against Biden.
The Senate has taken such action less frequently. In 2024, the Senate voted unanimously to hold Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena to testify — the first time since 1971 that the Senate had asked the Justice Department to pursue criminal contempt charges against an individual, lawmakers said.
Democrats called Thursday’s contempt vote against Fauci a disgraceful way to approach a career NIH scientist who spent more than five decades in public service. Fauci left government at the end of 2022.
“These attacks upon Dr. Fauci, it’s not just about him,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) said in last week’s hearing, warning that the session was “sending signals” that other researchers, scientists and health care workers could face attacks if they “don’t get in line” with political priorities.
Democrats have also said that Republicans wrongly handled their investigation of Fauci leading up to last week’s hearing.
Peters has accused Paul of not permitting Democrats to take part in a planned transcribed interview with Fauci earlier this year. Paul also has repeatedly said he believes that Fauci belongs in prison.
“Rather than attempting to work together to pursue areas of shared concern, you have directed your investigative efforts at Dr. Fauci in a manner that appears to be pursing an outcome you have prejudged,” Peters wrote to Paul in a June 9 public letter.
Peters has contrasted Paul’s approach to Fauci with a bipartisan investigation of biosafety and potential laboratory leaks that the two senators launched in 2024, when Peters was committee chairman.
Democrats and Republicans have also disagreed over the purpose of last week’s hearing, when Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. Paul and other GOP lawmakers have said that it was a necessary step for accountability around the government’s pandemic response and that Fauci’s response demonstrated he was evading questions.
Fauci’s allies — Democratic lawmakers and others, including some Republicans who served with him in past administrations — asked whether it was appropriate for GOP lawmakers to spend several hours peppering Fauci with controversial questions he had already said he would not answer.
One former GOP aide pointed to a 2011 ethics opinion issued by the District of Columbia Bar, an organization that guides lawyers on professional conduct. According to the D.C. Bar, congressional staff lawyers should not force a witness to testify if they will only invoke the Fifth Amendment, because that creates a situation where a witness can be wrongly harassed and embarrassed.
Senate Republicans last week publicly discussed whether Fauci could be held in contempt for refusing to answer questions after making an opening statement.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) noted a 2013 episode in the House in which an IRS official made an opening statement and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about whether her agency had wrongly targeted conservative groups. The GOP-led House concluded that the official had waived her Fifth Amendment rights by making an opening statement, and she was ultimately found in contempt.
Kimberly Hamm, who served as general counsel to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and is now a partner at Morrison Foerster, questioned whether Fauci’s opening statement was sufficient grounds to bring a contempt charge.
“It’s hard for me to see that he substantively waived his Fifth Amendment rights,” she said, noting the brevity of his comments.
Hamm also said Senate committees conducting investigations had additional tools, such as providing immunity to witnesses, that could have helped Paul get answers from Fauci.
“An immunity order would allow you to get that information, and it would give the witness some comfort,” Hamm said.
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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